September 26 - October 9, 2023 |
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Welcome and CISSR Preview of Activities |
Welcome back, CISSR Community, to a new academic year! We look forward to seeing old and new faces as campus starts to bustle again after the sparse and quiet days of summer. In this first digest of the academic year, we share a preview of the major activities and programs – old and new – on our calendar. As always, stay tuned to our digest for research updates, event announcements, and funding opportunities.
Funding Opportunities
Faculty Grants Available for 2023-24
Social Sciences Division Graduate Student Funding Opportunities – Both Calls for Proposals will be released in January 2024 with applications due by March 31, 2024
Rudolph Field Research Grants: CISSR provides graduate students with up to $5,000 for fieldwork expenses. Open to SSD graduate students at any stage.
Dissertation Completion Grants: CISSR provides shared office space in Pick Hall and a $5,000 research allowance that can be used for travel, computing, books, or conference costs. Applicants must be ABD, with a realistic plan to defend the dissertation within 18 months.
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AFIDEP CISSR Research Fellows 2023-24
With support from UChicago Global and the Provost’s Office, CISSR will host three junior scholars from the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) for a six-week mentored, writing sabbatical. This inaugural group of visitors will attend scholarly workshops, receive mentorship from CISSR faculty fellows, and expand their research networks while working at CISSR. Then, in April, CISSR will host AFIDEP’s Director of Research Nyovani Madise who will speak about cultivating equitable and sustainable research collaborations with African institutions. Stay tuned for an announcement about this important collaboration.
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2024 CISSR –TEPSIS International Graduate Student Conference
The 4th gathering of CISSR and TEPSIS researchers for scholarly exchange will take place in Paris and has to be scheduled around the Olympics and two different academic calendars. Planning is in process; exact dates will be announced in December.
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New & Upcoming Books from CISSR Faculty
Rochelle Terman – Assistant Professor of Political Science
E. Summerson Carr – Associate Professor at Crown School and Affiliate in Anthropology
Sarah Newman – Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Jenny Trinitapoli – Professor of Sociology and CISSR Director
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Join us to celebrate Sarah Newman's Unmaking Waste. She will be in a round-table discussion with Claudia Brittenham, Pauline Goul, and Mariana Petry Cabral about her new book. A reception will follow.
5:00pm at International House 1414 East 59th Street
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"I've always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings." - Jenny Han
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September 26
CPOST & The Guardian
5:00 - 7.00 pm, David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago
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Katz Center for Mexican Studies
6:00 pm, Zoom (registration required)
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September 28
Center for Latin American Studies
Stolen Cars, Global Cars: A Transnational Urban Ethnography - Gabriel Feltran (Sciences Po)
12:30 - 1:50 pm, SSRB 305
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October 4
Department of Sociology
12:30 - 1:50pm at SSRB 305 (Albion Small Room)
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Center for Study of Gender & Sexuality
5:00 - 6:30pm, 5733 University Avenue
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The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
7:00pm, ISAC - Breasted Hall at 11555 E. 58th St
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October 5
Center for East Asian Studies
5:00 - 6:30pm, Regenstein Library Room 122 at 1100 E. 57th Stt
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Center for Global Health
5:00 - 8:00pm at International House, 1414 East 59th St.
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Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies
6:30pm, Tea Room, SSRB 201 at 1126 East 59th St
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Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity
5:00 - 6:30pm, Tea Room, SSRB 201 at 1126 East 59th St
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October 9
CISSR & Law, Letters, & Society
12:30 - 1:50pm at Tea Room, SSRB 201 at 1126 East 59th St
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Fridays 12:30 - 2:00pm in Saieh Hall for Economics, Room 021
September 29: Retrieval Failures in Consumption Smoothing: A Field Experiment on Seasonal Poverty - Supreet Kaur (University of California, Berkeley)
October 6: Ethnic-biased Agglomeration: Forced Resettlement and Economic Development in Malaysia - Shanon Hsuan-Ming Hsu, University of Chicago
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Thursdays 12:30 - 1:50pm in NORC conference room, Room 232 at 1155 E. 60th St & Zoom
October 5: "Evictions and Poverty" - Winnie van Dijk, Yale University
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Thursdays 4-5:30pm in the John Hope Franklin Room (SSRB 224)
September 28: Opening up Hillsides: Challenges and Opportunities in Agricultural Cultivation in Upland Southeast China, 1600-1919 - Peng Yiyun (UChicago Postdoctoral Fellow) joint event with CEGU Colloquium
October 5: (from 4 - 5pm) Graduate student source workshop: Republican social surveys, “Kai Cai Tu Shuo” - Zhao Fang & Gabriel Groz
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Mondays 12 - 2:00pm in SSRB 201
October 2: "Infrastructural Empire" - Yuting Dong
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Mondays 12 - 1:20pm in Pick 506
October 2: "Statelessness and World Citizenship" - Anjali Mohan (University of Chicago)
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Thursdays 3:30 - 5pm in Pick Hall 506 & Zoom
October 5: “Outside Influence: U.S. Pressure And The Race To Free Trade In Developing Countries” - Adam Dean (George Washington University)
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Thursdays 5:00 - 6:30pm in Pick Hall 118
September 28: Joint reception with Latin American History Workshop - meeting in Tea Room/SSRB 201
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Around Town and Down the Road |
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September 30
Newberry Library
9.00 a.m. - 4.00 p.m.
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October 6
Northwestern University
9:00 a.m. - 6.00 p.m at Harris Hall, Room 108
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Assoc. Professor Darryl Li Explains Ethnographic Lawyering in American Anthropology
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Darryl Li, Associate Professor of Anthropology, previous CISSR Faculty Research and Book Fellow, published a paper in American Anthropologist titled "How to Read a Case? Ethnographic Lawyering, Conspiracy, and the Origins of Al-Qaeda." The paper conceptualizes the practice of "ethnographic lawyering," which Prof. Li describes as a practice which aims to center those under suspicion and uncover the way legal structures and rhetoric influence the subjects’ experiences and their representation in court. Prof. Li analyzes the early US court cases involving Al Qaeda which utilized the legal theory of conspiracy to produce a more widespread litigation capable of convicting with less clear evidence. By sharing specific stories of this prosecutorial campaign, such as Enaam Arnaout, a US Citizen who owned Osama Bin Laden’s biography in Arabic, Prof. Li, shows how easily prosecuters could allege crimes with the flimsiest of connections to Al-Qaeda based on these flawed legal arguments. Prof. Li’s article outlines the many ramifications of using conspiracy theory in law and prosecuting individuals for collective crimes, while showing that ethnographic lawyering can bridge the gap of understanding between the objective “law” and the subjective experience of court for defendants. Read the article here.
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Prof. Nalepa Asks Why “Lustration” is not More Common in Regimes Transitioning to Democracy? |
Monika Nalepa, Professor of Political Science and a previous CISSR Faculty Research Fellow, co-authored a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science titled "How Does Kompromat Affect Political Science?" with Konstantin Sonin, the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at Harris. The article reviews the usage of kompromat, and its use in transparency regimes. In this article, Professors Nalepa and Sonin question the political motivation in containing kompromat, by those politicians in positions to question and weaponize kompromat against their corrupt political adversaries. Professors Nalepa and Sonin built a model in an effort to explain why uncompromised politicians might avoid a transparency regime. The model and their conclusion suggests that in transitioning communist regimes, politicians will strategically refrain from transparency to continue suggestions and implications of corruption rather than truth-telling campaign which risks a lot for a newly more democratic voting. They corroborate their results using original data from the Global Transitional Justice Dataset and data on elections, incumbency, and successor autocrat status in post-communist Europe. Read the article here
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Prof. Adom Getachew Talks History and Political Thought |
Adom Getachew, a Professor of Political Science and a CISSR Faculty Book Fellow and Board Member was interviewed by Nawal Arjini in the New York Review of Books on a piece she contributed to about Howard French's Born in Blackness. Throughout the interview, Prof. Getachew discusses the influence of W.E.B DuBois on international politics and the importance of re-integrating African histories and perspectives into the usual practice of intellectual and scholarly output despite the willful erasure of the said perspectives from pre-colonial and colonial history by the Western world and colonizers. During the interview, Prof. Getachew suggests that history remains a critical piece to understand when studying political thought, by adding context to ideas which seem unimpeachable provide scholars and the public the opportunity to better understand the world that created African political thought. These public conversations help build up a historical consciousness which can only assist in the public understanding political theory and the reasons politics look how it does today. Read the article here.
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